Kyra Bussanich - Sweet Cravings: 50 Seductive Desserts for a Gluten-Free Lifestyle

Copyright 2013 by Kyra Bussanich
Photographs copyright 2013 by Leela Cyd

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bussanich, Kyra.
Sweet cravings : 50 seductive desserts for a gluten-free lifestyle / Kyra Bussanich.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Baking. 2. Desserts. 3. Gluten-free dietRecipes. I. Title.
TX765.B947 2013
641.86dc23

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-361-3
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-360-6

Food styling by Adrian Hale

v3.1

Looking back on my life, it seems obvious that I was destined to become a pastry chef.

Even when I was still too young to read, the heroine of my favorite book was a badger named Frances who loved to eat bread and jam.

When I was twelve, an age when most other girls were cutting out photos of teen idols from YM magazine, I was combing through my subscription to Martha Stewart Living , tearing out dessert recipes. By age fourteen, I was responsible for making dinner for my family two nights a week (Mondays spaghetti and Thursdays baked rice pudding with a gingersnap crust). I saved my allowance to buy cookbooks with full-color photos. I baked for slumber parties and family birthdays, and by the time I was sixteen, I was making all the holiday pies for family celebrations. In college, I used baking for stress reduction, handing out cookies and lemon bars to all grateful comers. I even used money intended for textbooks to instead buy my first KitchenAid mixer.

So why, then, did it take me so long to realize that baking was my calling? Id always loved to bake, but it was something I did for fun, in my spare time: I didnt consider it a serious career. And then I went gluten-free.

When I first began my gluten-free journey eight years agohaving been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that barred my eating goodies made with flourI trudged through each stage of mourning for my comforting dessert staples: cinnamon rolls, scones, cakes, pies, tarts, and doughnuts. I combed through gluten-free cookbooks and websites for recipes to re-create my favorite treats, but, overwhelmingly, the message I kept getting was, Lower your expectations: without flour and other critical ingredients, a gluten-free cake will never have the same good flavor and texture as a regular cake.

With that disheartening news, I glumly began trying to bake gluten-free. While there were several close approximations of the desserts I was trying to create, nothing impressed me as tasting like the real thing.

Without a gluten-free go-to resource to advise me, I had to find my own way, beginning with attending Le Cordon Bleus patisserie and baking program. This school changed my outlook. I could either perpetually feel I was missing out (and its difficult to be a first-rate baker without taste-testing your creations)or take positive action. I chose the latter. Armed with my newly gleaned information about the chemistry and function of ingredients, Id come home after class and begin experimenting with gluten-free flours to see if I could re-create what I had made in class that day. Admittedly, in the beginning, I turned out a few hockey pucks. But as I kept experimenting, I gradually developed a trove of trusted recipes.

Once I had come up with a handful of cakes that were really good, I started sharing them with friends and family. My first cake offering was Persian Love Cake, now very popular in my bake shop. The combination of spicy cardamom and warm, toasty pistachios, topped with cardamom Italian meringue buttercream, was a hit with everyone who tried it.

Shortly thereafter, I got a phone call from a gluten-free family friend who was getting married. I happily scheduled a cake tasting for the blissful couple. We met, they tasted the Persian Love Cake, Raspberry Beret (a vanilla cake topped with raspberry Italian meringue buttercream), and Lemon Cake, and chose all three for their wedding. Soon after the wedding, a guest in attendance called me and asked if I could make cupcakes for a baby shower. The calls escalated: I received several requests from guests at the baby showerwho werent even gluten-free eaters!who thought my cupcakes were delicious and wanted to know if I made birthday cakes. The only marketing I ever did was taking my cupcakes and other treats to parties and letting people sample, and business increased as word spread.

For the first eighteen months, I ran my bake shop as a custom-order business from my certified home kitchen, but that all changed one Tuesday evening. I have always loved watching the Food Network, and my husband and I were reclining in front of Cupcake Wars when he suggested I apply for the show. I had heard this before, from multiple people who told me they thought my cupcakes were the best they had ever eatengluten-free or notand on this particular night, I agreed to try. I pulled out the laptop, sent off a quick email to the Cupcake Wars website, and pressed Send.

My phone rang a few hours later. Jessica, the shows casting director, was on the line and asked if I could submit a two-minute videothe next day. This didnt give me much chance to think of a creative hook, but, nonetheless, my husband pulled out his handheld camera and we filmed a short video (http://tiny.cc/KyraCCWAudition). I sent it off, deciding that the producers would either like it or not. Then I got nervous about the idea of competing head-to-head with other successful bakers on camera. What if the judges saidon camerathat my cupcakes were awful? Or worse, what if I succumbed to stage fright and messed up my recipes?

With these thoughts circling through my head, by the time the producer called to invite me on the show, I was a ball of nerves. But in the back of my mind was the hope that if I did compete, and the judges loved what I made, I could help change the false idea that gluten-free baked goods are either completely disgusting or just barely edible. I could help people see that gluten-free cakes can be just as delicious, if not more so, than gluten-full.

I felt like the underdog going in: I was the first gluten-free baker to appear on the show, and I was judged on whether these were excellent cupcakes, not on whether they were good cupcakes for being gluten-free. To my relief, the judges comments were extremely positive, and I wound up making it to the final round before being knocked out of the competition.

The following season, the producer asked if Id like to compete in a redemption episodethis time against other bakers who also lost in the final round. Hoping I had learned something from my first appearance and relishing the challenge, I agreedand this time I won. The only mention of my cupcakes being completely gluten-free came in the last four seconds of the show: not once did I mention to the judges that I was baking gluten-free and competing against traditional bakers. I had won based simply on taste.